October 12, 2008

Budget cuts not affecting Daley's PR machine

Daley’s PR machine

Budget cuts not affecting city's public relations efforts City message coming from a lot of messengers

By Dan Mihalopoulos

Chicago Tribune reporter

October 12, 2008

Mayor Richard Daley headed to the lakefront last month to announce his latest environmental plans, accompanied by no fewer than six City Hall representatives.

But when a stiff breeze threatened the banner used as the mayor's backdrop, two employees of an outside public relations firm stepped up to hold the flapping sign. They, after all, were hired to organize the event.

At a time when Daley is cutting more than 1,000 workers to plug a $469 million deficit, he is also spending millions to promote the city's image and manage the message coming from City Hall.

The city employs more than 50 representatives across various departments in the Daley administration, at a cost this year of $4.7 million. In addition to that in-house army, the city has funneled millions more to private spin doctors.

"The city absolutely has to communicate its message," said Marilyn Katz, owner of MK Communications, whose Web site boasts of working for 11 city departments.

"It's not a luxury," said Katz. "It's connecting people to programs. It's not fluff. It's information people need."

MK is among seven firms that the city recently awarded five-year public relations contracts that could pay as much as $5 million each—although the city says they will never reach that ceiling.

On Saturday, Daley defended the contracts, noting nowhere near that total had been spent so far.

"It's worth it," Daley said.

Their services supplement the public relations machine run by Daley's long-serving press secretary, former Tribune reporter Jacquelyn Heard, who receives an annual salary of more than $172,000 that puts her among the highest paid employees on a city workforce of more than 38,000.

Heard's salary has risen far faster than inflation. She received a $12,000 raise in the 2008 budget.

"It's a 24-hour, no-vacation, no-rest-for-the-weary kind of job," Heard said after attending a news conference with the mayor Friday. "I'm not complaining about it. I'm just stating the facts."

Heard said she now does what used to be the work of two people, working with the mayor on speeches, press releases and his "talking points" for public appearances as well as coordinating the message emanating from 50 city departments.

Besides her staff of 15 in the press office—which includes a $118,000-a-year deputy press secretary, five assistant press secretaries and two photographers—dozens of other city officials spread throughout city government departments also answer to Heard as they field questions from reporters and attempt to stay on message.

The city directs its employees to send calls from reporters to the public information officers for the departments, who communicate closely with Heard's office.

Other Daley-controlled units of government employ their own press operations, including the Chicago Public Schools, the Park District and Chicago Transit Authority.

Katz said the city will call on the seven firms as new public relations needs arise over the coming years. Last month, MK received the first two payments under the deal, together worth almost $22,000.

The city has paid MK Communications $3.9 million since 2004 under another contract with the Environment Department for work including promoting expansion of the blue-cart recycling program.

Other contracts with the city have paid MK another $1.3 million, city records show. But direct payments are not the only way that public relations firms are rewarded for promoting causes dear to the mayor.

MK also has promoted the city's initiatives to encourage the restoration of bungalows. The non-profit bungalow group, which receives a large chunk of its funding from the city, paid MK $150,000 in 2006, the last year of available tax records for the Historic Chicago Bungalow Association.

Katz said her firm and other public relations contractors do much that the city could never do with its own employees.

"Most [public information officers] don't know how to do advertising, marketing, community outreach, graphics—there are a million things," said Katz, who was a press secretary for Mayor Harold Washington.

When the city hires an outside firm, she added, "You get the experience of 10 or 20 or 70 people rather than one person."

Katz said it also is cheaper for the city to ask firms such as hers to work with printers to produce promotional material for their programs because printers do not want to wait for the city to pay them, a process that could last several months.

"It's a great deal for the city," she said.

Jasculca/Terman and Associates, another firm with longtime ties to the mayor, is among the seven companies with the new City Hall public relations deal. It organized Daley's lakefront announcement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, paid with money the city got from a state grant.

In the 1990s, Jasculca/Terman was paid almost $2.5 million to handle public relations for the blue bag recycling program.

The firm's other clients have included After School Matters, a charity founded by the mayor's wife, Maggie.

Another of the seven is the firm of former Daley press aide and campaign manager Carolyn Grisko. Her company has been paid about $1.25 million since 2003 under a contract with the city's Aviation Department.

Grisko said her firm produces the annual report for O'Hare International Airport and writes "one or two speeches each year" for Daley's aviation commissioner. She also was recruited to edit and do graphic design for documents related to the recently approved deal to lease Midway Airport to a private consortium.

All 50 aldermen on the Chicago City Council had to file paperwork earlier this year detailing their outside income and gifts. The Tribune took that ethics paperwork and posted the information here for you to see. You can search by ward number or alderman's last name.

The Cook County Assessor's office has put together lists of projected median property tax bills for all suburban towns and city neighborhoods. We've posted them for you to get a look at who's paying more and who's paying less.

Past posts

Clout has a special meaning in Chicago, where it can be a noun, a verb or an adjective. This exercise of political influence in a uniquely Chicago style was chronicled in the Tribune cartoon "Clout Street" in the early 1980s. Clout Street, the blog, offers an inside look at the politics practiced from Chicago's City Hall to the Statehouse in Springfield, through the eyes of the Tribune's political and government reporters.